Friday, May 12, 2006

Creepy Pete Supports Spying on 6th District Residents

Republican State Senator Peter Roskam who is running for a seat in Congress says he supports the collection of phone records by the National Security Agency.Roskam said during a taping today of WBBM AM's "At Issue" program that as he understands it there is no question that such data collection is legal.

News broke this week that the NSA has been collecting millions of Americans' everyday telephone records.

Roskam said Americans' civil liberties are "precious" but it has to be balanced with border security protecting against terrorist attacks.

Creepy.

Update -- Newt Gingrich on the domestic spying that Roskam says is without question legal:

I’m not going to defend the indefensible. The Bush administration has an obligation to level with the American people. And I'm prepared to defend a very aggressive anti-terrorist campaign, and I'm prepared to defend the idea that the government ought to know who’s making the calls, as long as that information is only used against terrorists, and as long as the Congress knows that it’s underway.

But I don’t think the way they've handled this can be defended by reasonable people.

Now, let's not be too hasty--it takes Rahm Emanuel a couple of days at least to stick his finger into the wind and make a determination. I'm sure Duckworth will have a position on illegal NSA wiretaps and data collection soon after that's complete.

I mean, it's not like this is CLEARLY, OBVIOUSLY, GLARINGLY wrong or anything, requiring a quick response. There's plenty of time to come up with a poll-tested answer!